by Weston Ochse
He fell to his knees and retched. With his stomach almost empty, there was nothing to come up. Walker dry-heaved until the feeling left. When he stood, a long string of drool hugged his chin. He let it hang as he took a shaky step forward. Now he knew who had destroyed the city.
He turned on the radio as he stumbled forward. When it was ready, he called in to home station.
“Where are you?” came Jen’s voice immediately.
“In Kad … Kadwan,” he croaked.
“What’s wrong? Why do you sound like that?”
“Everything’s gone. The magic is … so … strong.” He stopped to grit his teeth. His body began to shake and he fought it back down. “Gotta … keep … moving.”
“Jack…”
“How … how long?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Hoover?”
“Almost there.”
“Uh … good dog.”
“Walker, this is Billings. I’m sorry I got you into this, but we need you now.”
“You got me,” he said, aware that his tongue had made it sound like You goth me.
“Listen closely. Musso discovered something. It looks like a man named Saw Thuza Tun ordered the tattoo suit from the Triad. Tun probably has a modicum of control. We don’t know how much. But you might be able to get through to him if needed.”
“Fuh … fuck that.”
“Exactly. So you need to find the focus. Do you know what that is?”
As Walker stumbled forward he remembered the conversation he’d had with Laws about the use of foci to channel and control spirits.
“Fo … cus?”
“Yes, Walker. A focus. It could be a ring or a bracelet or even a necklace. It could be anything.”
“Underwear. Bar … Barbie dolls.”
“What’d he say?” Billings asked someone.
“I think he said something about Barbie dolls and underwear,” he heard Musso say.
“Ceremonial,” Walker said, the word sounding like Theremonial.
“What’s wrong with him?” Musso asked.
“It’s all the magic,” Billings said. “It’s affecting him like this. We can only hope that it goes away.”
“Gothes away,” he said, stumbling even farther forward.
Suddenly a qilin turned the corner and ran down the street toward him. Walker tried to raise his rifle, but he didn’t have the strength. It was as though the buzz of magic had replaced everything.
The chimera ran straight at him.
Walker screamed in a cracked and broken voice as the beast slid to a stop in front of him.
But the creature didn’t attack. Instead, it sniffed him.
Walker had never been this close to a live one before. He could see the reticulations on the beast’s scales. Each one seemed to be intricately carved. Its eyes glowed a heated orange and its breath felt hot against his skin. Walker couldn’t take his eyes off the spikes. The chimeric equivalent of a puffer fish’s, they jutted out at all angles. One stumble, one bull rush, and he’d be impaled.
“Walker? Are you there?”
The qilin was startled. It jumped back and bared its teeth.
Walker reached up with a shaking hand and very slowly turned the radio off.
The creature sniffed his hand.
Walker didn’t dare move.
Suddenly the chimera grabbed him by the leg and began to drag him toward the center of the city. The viselike grip didn’t hurt, but there was no escaping it. Walker held on to his Stoner with both hands, hugging it to his chest, at the same time keeping his head from bouncing along the scorched earth.
They’d gone perhaps three blocks before a great horn sounded. The qilin stopped. It let go of Walker and raised its head. The sound came again. The qilin glanced once more at Walker, then took off at a gallop toward the sound.
It took Walker a few minutes to get his strength back. He stood unsteadily. Looking around, he realized that the streets were widening. Where were the cars? Where were the homes? Everything was gone. What was even more astounding was that he hadn’t been eaten. Whatever had driven the mythological monster to take him had also freed him as it called the qilin back.
61
KADWAN. DAWN.
He stood, staring at the cricket pitch through the scope of his Stoner, for five minutes. There was nothing that could have prepared him for what he saw.
A thousand wooden crates rested on the pitch, aligned into grids. Atop each crate was a man, woman, or child, naked except for a dagger each held in their hands. The front row held three men he recognized—Laws, Ruiz, and Holmes standing on crates as well. Unlike the others, the SEALs were chained to the wood at each wrist and ankle, forcing them into the position of a dog. They’d been beaten. Blood was dripping from their faces onto the wood.
In front of them, looking ten feet tall, stood a man who could only be Chi Long. He wore chitinous medieval Chinese armor composed of green and silver scales. At his shoulders and feet were the heads of dragons in an aqua blue. They writhed upon his limbs, as if they were alive, but remained where they were. There was a red cloak beneath his armor. Tattered and scorched in places, it flowed several feet behind him like a battered bridal train.
But it was the face that transfixed Walker. Beneath a mane of luxuriously long black hair was the face of a dead thing. As if Chi Long had crawled from a barrow or crypt, the skin and sinew of his face was pulled back as tight as a drum. The skin had aged to the color of ochre, highlighting a mouthful of spiked teeth and fierce yellow glowing eyes.
Chi Long held a dagger in his right hand, and even as Walker watched, Chi Long pointed it to the sky that was beginning to brighten with the coming dawn.
Having seen what a sacrifice of blood could do to the contents of a single crate, Walker could only imagine what would happen if a thousand Karen did the same on the killing pitch.
Switching the selector switch to Fire, he took careful aim.
And fired.
A puff of dust exploded from the back of the demon’s head as the bullet tore through it.
He fired again, confused by the result.
He was rewarded with another puff of dust.
Chi Long turned toward him. As he watched, the holes made by his rounds closed.
The demon pointed at Walker. He felt its power from a hundred yards away. Then the demon curled its finger in the universal gesture of Come here.
Walker tried to squeeze the trigger, but found that his fingers no longer worked. The Stoner fell from his now paralyzed hands. Once again he was a child. The day was heavy with rain and he’d been walking home alone from school. It had begun with a whisper, one that he’d finally answered.
“Who is it?”
“Please,” came the low, soft voice from everywhere and nowhere at all.
“I can’t see you,” he’d said, such an innocent child about to be taken. “Who are you?”
“I am alone. I am lonely,” came the voice, now not so soft, sounding more like the crunching of broken glass.
Little Jackie Walker had felt the fear then.
He’d thought about running.
Maybe if he had, nothing would have happened.
Maybe if he had, his father wouldn’t have been killed trying to get payback.
Maybe if he had, he’d have lived the life of a regular kid with regular problems.
But he’d never know. He’d never know because he’d decided to be curious.
“Who are you?” he’d asked. “Where are you hiding?”
Then the words came in too many languages, sometimes all at once, sometimes separate. It sounded like a child. It sounded like a man. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like everyone and no one.
Then it said one word—“Jackie”—and everything went black.
Walker stumbled and found that he’d been moving toward Chi Long. He was less than a dozen feet from Chi Long and was unable to stop. He moved to within a half foot of the demon, who looked him up and do
wn. He sniffed Walker, having to bend almost completely over to do so. Walker smelled the scent of hyacinth and death coming from the armor.
“Aaah, yesss,” said the demon. “We knew you once. You were ours.”
Walker’s eyes rolled into his head as he fought against Chi Long’s power. He didn’t know what the demon meant, but he needed to free himself. He had a pistol on his right thigh and a knife on his left thigh.
“Take this.” Chi Long handed Walker a long, wickedly curved dagger.
In Walker’s mind’s eye, he jammed it into Chi Long’s face, but in reality he found himself raising the knife and walking stiff-legged to where Laws was chained to a crate. Walker felt the impetus of the knife before it reached its destination.
Run, Laws! he screamed inside. Come on, man, please!
But Laws couldn’t move. He pulled himself to the end of his chains and made a furious face. “Snap out of it, kid!”
The knife came down slowly, piercing the skin of Laws’s arm, sliding through it ever so slowly.
Laws screamed.
Walker screamed on the inside. But it didn’t help. He walked around the other side of the crate and stabbed Laws in his other arm.
They both screamed again, inside and out.
Then he was forced to turn to Holmes. His knife hand rose, but then the control went away. Once again, he was his own. He turned to Chi Long in time to see a qilin spike buried in his chest and Yaya’s other hand coming around to stab him with another. Just as the second spike penetrated the demon’s chest, the demon screamed in outrage and flung Yaya away. Chi Long staggered.
Walker’s paralysis gone, he leaped forward and plunged the knife into Chi Long’s back. He started to yank it out and stab the monster again, but Holmes’s shout made him turn.
“Hurry, Walker!”
Now free of Chi Long’s influence, Walker shook his head to rid himself of the remnants of control, then hurried to comply. Each of the chains holding the other SEALs was held in place by a bolt, beyond their reach. But it was easy for Walker to release them.
They climbed down to the ground.
“What took you so long?” Ruiz asked.
Laws clenched his teeth as he ripped his shirt into strips to bind his wounds.
“Form a circle, SEALs. Here they come,” Holmes ordered.
Walker handed Laws the 9mm pistol and drew his own knife. The thousand or so Karen, who until this moment had been prepared to sacrifice themselves in order to give birth to the army of qilin, were climbing from their crates and running toward the SEALs.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Ruiz asked the universe.
Then the first wave was upon them. The fact that they had to scramble around the crates made it so they all couldn’t attack at once. But the SEALs were in the thick of it. They dispatched the first four opponents without much thought. But more came on, and more after that. Fighting back to back, the SEALs’ only hope came from the fact that their opponents were completely untrained and simply threw themselves in their direction. One after the other after the other, they attacked and died, until the pile of bodies was higher than a man’s height.
For a moment, Walker thought they might be safer behind the wall of the dead, then he realized that now their opponents could jump on top of them. The other SEALs seemed to realize the same thing at the same time. They climbed on the crates they’d just evacuated, and Holmes and Ruiz got stabbed for their efforts.
Suddenly Chi Long was back. The spikes remained in his chest. He seemed weaker, but he still had command of his people. He shouted and they stilled, all eyes going to him.
Walker felt the power descend on him once more. He felt his loss of control and the power of another take him over. He turned and raised his knife. Facing Holmes, all he had to do was jam the knife into the man’s back and he would be irrevocably removed from the living. Walker took a step forward, then was launched sideways as a weight struck him. He fell hard to the ground, hard enough to lose the air in his chest and the knife from his hand. A growl erupted from the creature that had attacked him, but the growl wasn’t for him. Hoover! The dog launched herself at the demon, ripping with her teeth and shaking her head.
The demon howled and made a swipe at the dog with a taloned hand. It caught Hoover on the front leg. Blood spurted as flesh parted. The dog howled miserably, but hung on, even as the demon clawed at her again and again and again.
Holmes and Ruiz saw their chance. They leaped on the demon, grabbed the spikes, and jammed them over and over into any unprotected part of Chi Long they could find. He toppled onto his back, trying to defend himself against the naked fury of the SEALs.
Walker clawed his way to his feet and atop the fallen demon. He grabbed frantically at the creature’s hands and torso, but he felt nothing. He didn’t see any rings, nor did he see any bracelets. He had no necklace, no crown, nothing. So what was the focus?
With a roar, the demon surged to a standing position, throwing Holmes aside like a doll. Walker fell hard to the ground. Ruiz wasn’t so lucky. Chi Long gripped him in two hands and viciously snapped his back, then hammered him into the ground over and over, screaming in frustration and rage.
It dropped Ruiz’s body and turned toward Holmes; then a long qilin spike pierced the back of its head, the point coming through his left eye. Yaya! For that instant, the figure of Chi Long disappeared, replaced by that of a dumpy man in a tattooed skin suit. Anger laced his chubby face and bile flew from mad lips.
And a necklace encircled his neck.
Then he was once again Chi Long as he reached behind and pulled the spike free.
But that one glimpse had been enough to give the SEALs the direction they needed.
Holmes leaped onto the chest of the demon and clawed his way upward so that he could grab at the neck. His fingers searched for the necklace, but he couldn’t find it. His hands scrabbled against the chitinous armor as Chi Long roared. The monster grabbed Holmes and threw him a dozen yards, where he fell, arms akimbo.
Walker leaped atop Chi Long’s back. While one arm wrapped around the monster’s neck, the other reached down and tried to find the necklace. Chi Long spun, reaching up and trying to dislodge the SEAL. But Walker had a death grip on Chi Long’s neck, and used it to hold on, even as Chi Long spun again. Suddenly Walker’s searching hand experienced the pins and needles he associated with magic. He concentrated, moved his hand several inches to the left, then wrapped his hand around something that burned with energy. He pulled, but felt resistance. He pulled harder, as he slid from the monster’s back to the front. Now using both hands, he pushed both feet against the monster and heaved backwards, using his legs to push with every bit of his strength.
The monster grabbed him by the neck and squeezed. Chi Long’s strength was staggering. Walker felt impossible pressure against his windpipe. It took all of his concentration to keep his hands on the necklace and not to try and pry the monster’s hands away. Blackness began to invade his vision. Then—
Snap!
The necklace came free.
Suddenly he was falling.
As he hit the ground, he saw the demon replaced by a man—Saw Thuza Tun. The Karen man had started to shout something when one last spike pierced the back of his head and came out of his mouth. As he fell forward, Yaya stood behind him, grim determination and fury plastered on his blood-smeared face. Saw Thuza Tun was now merely human, and the spike’s effect was permanent.
Walker stared at the necklace in his hands. Made of jade beads, it had five jade “fingers,” carved like those of a person. Was this it? Was this the focus? He had an insane desire to wear the necklace. He felt his hands coming toward his own neck. He had no control. He could be powerful. He could rule the earth. But Yaya ran forward and knocked it from his grip. The necklace flew free and as it did so, Walker lost the urge to wear it.
He turned, ready to defend himself against the hordes, only to find them now milling around in stunned confusion, once again them
selves, trying to make their way through an imperfect world. Then he remembered.
“Holmes, we gotta go. Bombers are on their way.”
The SEAL team leader looked around. He spied Ruiz’s broken body and hauled it over his shoulder. “To the water,” he yelled.
They ran, climbing over bodies, pushing past the stunned Karen. They needed to make the beach and, with it, possible safety.
“Where’s the necklace?” Laws asked.
Before Walker could answer, a cry went up behind him. He turned to see a young man standing on top of a crate, holding the necklace high into the air.
“Oh, hell,” he said.
But he needn’t have worried.
The young man put on the necklace and for a single instant was Chi Long. But the power of the demon was too much for his frail human body. It burned to ash in an instant, the necklace falling to the wood of the crate. No sooner had it landed than it was taken up again. And again. And again. As each Karen wore it, he burst into flame and died.
Laws pulled Walker away. “Come on—hurry.”
Walker ran. His jerking fingers managed to switch on the radio.
“SEALs to the water,” Holmes screamed as the sound of jets rent the morning.
The Tornadoes flew in formation out of the west.
The SEALs hit the water and swam furiously.
Laws spied more than a dozen skiffs tied along the water’s edge and swam to one. He climbed in, shoved the fishing poles out, and got the outboard started on the second try. He revved the engine, then took off toward the SEALs in the water. He dropped the mooring rope off the left side so his teammates could grab on—first Yaya with Hoover in tow, then Walker, then Holmes, who was holding tightly on to Ruiz’s body. They made it perhaps a hundred meters away from shore before the land burned black of Kadwan erupted in a ball of effervescent destruction as one bomb after another ate away at those beings who would be demon until there was nothing left except the memory of a tattooed skin man who would be king.